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Matthew DockreyThe amazing thing about daylight savings is that we would rather *mess with the definition of time itself* than give people the freedom and flexibility to start their day an hour earlier or later as they see fit. Problems can only be solved through coercive conformity.
The Doctor@attoparsec Can I quote you on that?
@attoparsec Thank you.
tdietterich@attoparsec You are free to set your clocks to any value you like. But it will make things difficult when you want to coordinate on a meeting time.
@tdietterich Why would I have to change my clock in order to simply start my day an hour later because it's too dark at X:00 this time of year?
Will PalmerHaving one big DST cutoff also discourages people from setting sensible hours. They set their hours to something that kinda works throughout the year when DST is involved, but in northern areas it might make more sense to shift things by two to four hours, rather than one, or to shift multiple times per year. Sunrise is at around 2am in summer here.
Dr. ir. Brian R. Pauw@tdietterich @attoparsec I don’t think so; UTC works for everyone. The issue is the dictat that people have to start at a certain hour and that 12:00 is noonish. Abandon that, and you’re free to divide the clock anyway you want.
AndThisIsMrsPeacock 🏳🌈@tdietterich @attoparsec You know that any modern collaboration/calendar app automatically accounts for the local time of the users, right?
When Big Software Company decided not to do return-to-office, WFH also officially became flex time. We're allowed to work whatever hours work for us, accommodating for child care, elder care, personal appointments, and just plain preferring to sleep late. We're also explicitly empowered to reject any meeting request outside of our chosen work schedule.
@tdietterich @attoparsec The rules are simple: (1) publish your available hours in your calendar and (2) work enough hours to get your work done on schedule. That's it. Many of us, myself included, didn't think this would last in a highly regimented global company, but it has. Because productivity improved so shockingly fast when you let people work on their own terms. It's been wild but awesome.
Clocks are arbitrary, stop the stupid fussing with time. My opinion.
@andthisismrspeacock @attoparsec I will want to fuss with my time. And added flexibility might allow me to live on local solar time rather than locking myself to some time zone. I'd need to publish my time schedule (probably as an executable procedure rather than a declarative table). And I'd need to be able to coordinate with all of the businesses and people who remain locked into fixed time zones. Fun to imagine
@tdietterich @attoparsec I didn't think it would work either, until it did. Granted I have the luxury of working on a global team, so if you absolutely must talk to someone at 0400 my time I can refer you to someone in the UK who can answer your question... if I didn't have that it would be a bit harder. 😆
@andthisismrspeacock @attoparsec Yes I do. But they only use officially-defined time zones. Even with those, coordination is a pain. I run meetings nearly every day involving people in Europe, Africa, US, and Australia. It is worth thinking about how to build better coordination tools. Maybe the requirement to handle arbitrary time offsets would lead to a more flexible design?
@tdietterich @attoparsec This is true, but also there's, like, professional courtesy involved. We had someone last month scheduling meetings with India people, EU people and US west coast people all together, and props to our director, he saw that and immediately chimed in with "it is absolutely unreasonable to expect people in CA to be available at 0500 local, if you need to meet with all these individuals you need to schedule two separate meetings."
I get that that's a luxury!
@attoparsec yea, this sounds very progressive and social, untill your train is one hour late. Or worse, it left an hour ago.
It's not about coercion, it's about coordination.
It's not about coercion, it's about coordination.
Seb@DrorBedrack @attoparsec That makes no sense at all.
Western Infidels@DrorBedrack @attoparsec I agree. But there will always be argument, because it turns out there is no bright line separating coordination from coercion.
gnate@attoparsec
No doubt! Same goes for school schedules. Don't like bus routes on dark mornings? Start school later. It'll be the same as it was before except for the number on the wall, and it doesn't force people into unnecessary disruption.
No doubt! Same goes for school schedules. Don't like bus routes on dark mornings? Start school later. It'll be the same as it was before except for the number on the wall, and it doesn't force people into unnecessary disruption.
Nik@attoparsec have I got some bad news for you - https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time_zone
Fardels BearThe whole idea of DST offends me. When the sun is right overhead then it's noon. Anything else is flying in the face of nature.
Ives@riggbeck @attoparsec And you also wake up at 4am and go to bed at 8pm to make sure 12pm is the middle of your day?
Of course not. It's the principle of the thing. DST is a political idea which should not be messing about with geophysical facts.
@riggbeck @attoparsec Our time system is not factual but a convention. Nothing in nature or physics says that it's 12pm when the sun is at its highest. If we agree to call that moment 14:37 from now on then nothing fundamentally changes.
Yes, time is a convention, and so are the words we use to describe it. 'Noon' means the middle of the day, the point at which the sun is highest in the sky. I prefer to stick with that convention.
Nebulous Menace (Sandy B.)
Áron@attoparsec They can't do this to cows, but they do it to people. They just won't be awake before their biological clock wakes up. Maybe we should be more like cows
@attoparsec Amazing that people in the comments are defending changing the clocks as if it’s simpler than just saying “okay, from next week we move to our summer timetable”.
Thomas Favre-Bulle 🏳🌈@seb321 @attoparsec It is simpler, I have literally nothing to do. Regardless we should be on DST year round because f*ck sunsets at 3pm.
Harro van der Klauw@attoparsec that's missing the point, if you don't have to interact with others then it's all fine, but you can then stand waiting 3-4 hours for your morning coffeeshop to open, or the train driver to start work, or the teacher at school to show up.
Thomas Beagle@attoparsec Pretty cool hack, isn't it? The really really amazing thing is that entire countries all agreed to use daylight saving time.
Cavyherd<tired>This ☝️<so fucking tired>
Muiris@attoparsec DST causes rise in heart attacks, strokes & suicides. Every year, on the Monday after DST comes into effect, hospitals report a 24% spike in heart attacks. Doctors see an opposite trend each fall/Autumn : heart attack visits drop 21%. It’s original purpose was to save energy, it doesn’t even do that. https://www.businessinsider.com/daylight-savings-time-dst-death-heart-attacks-accident. https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-022-34704-9
Kristian@attoparsec It's absurd that we try to "fix" our established daily routines by changing the clocks instead of just changing the routines.
Zeitenwende@attoparsec haha! So true. However, will there be daylight saving in 200 years from now?
Oborosaur@attoparsec I'm all for affording personal preferences in the small, but large communities will usually organize their patterns around something, and at an infrastructure level that can be a very good thing. Daylight savings is certainly a hack, but I think I prefer it to my utilities company publishing an elaborate algorithm to calculate how many minutes before sunset the price of electricity drops every day.
MarkSThis sounds like an argument for abolishing official time altogether. Which is fine, provided you never have to actually meet anybody, catch a bus, go to the doctor, pick up your kids from school, ...
I agree with you that daylight savings time is a stupid idea.
I guess your post irks me a little because it suggests there's some absolute definition of time that's being changed. There isn't. Time zones are as artificial as daylight savings time. For that matter, so are clocks. They're just human convention. Only the solar day is "real", and that shifts by a couple of minutes every day.
But by all means, let's get rid of daylight savings time.
Space Hobo@attoparsec No: the amazing thing is that we do it in the SUMMER, when the days get to like only 2 hours of darkness around the solstice (at least here in London, at the 52nd parallel). What are we "saving" here? We've got too MUCH daylight, and need blackout curtains to sleep!
Mutesplash@attoparsec Disregarding work, keeping start times for meetings of willing participants constant and not endlessly negotiating them by the day or by the individual just saves everyone's time. I'm thinking like D&D or a communal breakfast so it isn't served cold.
Reach for the Stars 
@attoparsec I'm glad your job lets you work independently. I however depend on some 70 other production staff to do my job. It is vital that we all are in the same place at the same time in order to get the products we maintain our the door.
Mike P@attoparsec Daylight saving time is bad for the environment. An extra hour of sunlight evaporates more water from the lakes and rivers. ;)
Lynn Grant@attoparsec Before Michigan started observing DST in 1973, worked at a place (GMC Truck & Coach Engineering Department, now defunct) where they changed the starting time from 8 am to 7:15 am during the summer. Sort of a roll-your-own DST.
tessaraktPlautus, 200 BCE:
„Der Fluch der Götter jenem, der das Mittel fand, Tagesstunden streng zu unterscheiden. Verflucht sei auch, wer an diesem Ort die Sonnenuhr errichtet, die meine Tage elendig zerschneidet und zerhackt in kleine Stückchen.“
“The gods confound the man who first found out How to distinguish hours! Confound him, too, Who in this place set up a sun-dial, To cut and hack my days so wretchedly Into small portions.”
Jamie BoothI'm a big believer in "everyone uses UTC" and morning is just at a different time for everyone.